On the fifth day of Christmas . . .

Yes, I read Jim Holt’s Why Does the World Exist? over the weekend. It’s light stuff: A journalist ─ though a more-than-usually intelligent one ─ talks to philosophers and physicists with interesting opinions on the title question.

Precisely halfway through, though ─ pp. 150-153 ─ the author deftly inserts a personal story guaranteed to tug the heart-strings of dog lovers. My wife, who is of that breed, and not the least bit interested in metaphysics, actually cried when I read it to her. AND the dog story manages to include a curious theorem about prime numbers!

Altogether a pleasant holiday-weekend read.

So far as the title question is concerned, there is not much of a conclusion. How could there be?